OROVILLE — An Oroville woman was taken to Oroville Hospital, later to be booked into Butte County Jail, after she came allegedly came after her son with an ax Thursday afternoon, according to the Oroville Police Department.

The call came over the police scanner a little after 3:30 p.m. about a disturbance of peace in a house on the 100 block of Morningstar Drive just off Grand Avenue.

Sgt. John Sanzone said neighbors reported hearing screaming and things being broken inside the house.

When officers arrived, they found that Shirley Booth, 42, was still inside the house with an ax.

The woman's son, Christopher Booth, 20, told officers he had been in his room listening to music, when his mother chopped down his door with an ax, yelling she was going to kill him, Sanzone said.

Booth told officers she swung the ax at him several times barely missing his head and torso, before he jumped out the window and ran to a neighbor's house.

Officers cordoned off the street to traffic and approached the woman, who Sanzone said was dangling her arms out of the window.

She had barricaded the front door, so officers approached her at the window, and she warned them she had an ax inside.

Sanzone distracted Booth and quickly slipped handcuffs on her through the window.

Booth pulled him through the window and into the house in one swift movement, Sanzone said.

"It was just as quick as that," he said.

Another officer entered the house though the window, and Booth began fighting them inside, striking one officer and biting Sanzone.

Officers restrained the woman with a restraining device that restricts movement of a person's arms and legs, Sanzone said.

She was taken by ambulance to Oroville Hospital.

Sanzone said the woman would be booked on two counts of assaulting a police officer, obstructing and resisting a police officer, and vandalism.

Christopher Booth told this reporter his mother had smashed a big screen television and thousands of dollars worth of items.

Sanzone said the woman seemed coherent but very angry at her son and the police.

Sanzone said the son told him he had seen his mother smoking methamphetamine a day or so ago.

Neighbors said the woman's behavior had become more erratic lately.

Staff writer Mary Weston can be reached at 533-4415 or mweston@orovillemr.com.